RE-USE

LAMPS MADE OUT OF BOTTLES

PET bottles can also be used to produce lamps. And how? The Spanish designer Alvaro Catalán de Ocón shows us how. He designed stylish lamps around the used bottles as part of a project in Bogota in Columbia.

Recycling

BOTTLE CAPS IN THE BUMPER

The small runabout car Opel Adam is not only produced in Germany, it also offers a number of sustainable features. Old bottle caps from PET bottles have been made into car bumpers. Because the caps form the basis of a plastic granulate which is used to make, among other things, bumper mountings and headlamp housing.

Recycling

PLASTIC CAPS TO SIT ON

The Capped Out Chair from BRC Design consists of hundreds of colourful bottle caps. Benjamin Rollins Caldwell developed this creative armchair with great attention to detail. The former bottle caps are attached together with zip ties over a steel construction giving the chair its special structure and colourful appearance.

Recycling

PET-ART AS AN INSPIRATION

The Czech artist Veronika Richterová shows just what you can do with PET bottles if you have creative and innovative ideas. She makes fascinating sculptures out of used PET bottles – animals, plants, chandeliers, sofas and even a bra are included in her collection. She enjoys working with PET bottles because of their transparency and lightness and also of course because they are available everywhere. Richterová's PET art has already been on display for visitors to admire in exhibitions throughout Europe.

Recycling

PET TO SIT ON – THE "111 NAVY CHAIR"

It was originally developed for use on US Navy ships, nowadays it is a classic design piece for dining rooms: the "Navy Chair" by Emeco. After 66 years, the company has decided to present the chair for indoors and outdoors in a new material and instead of using aluminium, to use recycled PET bottles. 111 bottles are delivered by Coca-Cola to make one chair. The new version from 60 percent recycled material is, thanks to PET, not only stylish but also environmentally friendly.

Recycling

A LITRE OF LIGHT

Used PET bottles can deliver even more – for example a light source for simple housings. How does it work? The idea comes from students from the University of St. Gallen. The plastic bottle is filled with water and a small amount of bleach and then installed in the roof of the hut so that half the bottle juts out above the top. The water in the bottle now diffuses the daylight in the entire room below the bottle. The illuminating power of the bottle is equivalent to a 55 watt light bulb.

Recycling

BOTTLE EMPTY, BUILD A WALL

Honduras, 2005. A poor village in the north of the province Yoro. A funny German guy walks around with brochures. He shows pictures of neat, colourful houses to poor people, the unemployed, day labourers who live in temporary, run-down huts. "You could also have one of these", he announces to the amazed village dwellers. It isn't much easier to believe him when he explains what the houses are made of and the conditions required to build them: you need lots of people. They need to have a lot of time to spare. And you need empty plastic bottles to build them.

Recycling

PET BOTTLES CAN SAVE LIVES

It sounds incredible and yet so simple. With the help of the sun's rays and PET bottles, water is sterilized and made drinkable. The water is filled in transparent PET or glass bottles which are laid in the sun for 6 hours. In this time, the UV rays of the sun kill the germs that cause diarrhoea. The so-called SODIS method helps to prevent diarrhoea and so saves human lives. This is urgently required because over 4,000 children die every day from diarrhoeal diseases.

Recycling

MODERN PET ARCHITECTURE

The Taiwanese architect Arthur Huang developed a method in which plastic waste is moulded into hollow forms and can therefore be used again as building material. The walls of the "EcoArk" building in Taipeh consist of 1.5 million of these shapes.

Lightness makes a major difference

The fact that PET bottles are so light goes a long way to protecting the environment. So that when they are transported from the bottling plant to the consumer, savings can be made on fuel and therefore also in CO2, compared to the transport of heavier packaging. This reduces the impact on the environment!

PET = low weight = less environmental pollution on the roads

We can no longer imagine being without the PET bottle because it is not only low in weight, it is also hygienic and virtually unbreakable. This means we buy it again and again and it accompanies us on our sporting activities, our travels and in our handbag whenever we go shopping..

PROTECTING RESOURCES BY RECYCLING

The PET returnable bottles on which deposits have been paid, for example for mineral water and soft drinks, are collected via the deposit system of the company, Deutsche Pfandsystem GmbH, recycled and made available once more as a high-quality raw material.

An eco-balance of the Institute for Environmental Research (ifeu) found out that when comparing the most widely distributed PET disposable bottle, the 1.5 litre bottle, with the glass returnable bottle, there were no clear advantages for either one system or the other.

The study examined PET disposable drinks packaging and other drinks packaging such as PET returnable and glass returnable bottles in the areas of food storage (from 0.7 litre) and immediate consumption (smaller than 0.7 litre) for still mineral waters and carbonated mineral waters and soft drinks.

PET disposable bottles have become increasingly more environmentally friendly in recent years.

These factors show how the eco-balance of the 1.5 litre PET disposable bottle for carbonated water and soft drinks has improved:

Weight reduction of bottle by 14%

Increase in proportion of recycled material in the bottle by an average of 25%

Decrease in distribution distances by 38%

Drop in energy and process water consumption by 30% or 36%

The PET returnable bottle finished up by having more advantages overall in all categories than the other packaging systems investigated.

The study examined PET disposable drinks packaging and other drinks packaging such as PET returnable and glass returnable bottles in the areas of food storage (from 0.7 litre) and immediate consumption (smaller than 0.7 litre) for still mineral waters and carbonated mineral waters and soft drinks.